The personal attributes of Logotheti are of a different character; his glance is searching and fiery, his features mobile and expressive, and his forehead high and strongly marked; and to these no more striking contrast can be afforded than by the truly magnificent head of Angiolopolo. There is not a vestige of passion, not a trace of anxiety, nor care, nor emotion perceptible; his countenance is calm, benevolent, and beautiful: his brow is singularly smooth for his age, and its character of placidity has continued unchanged throughout a long life of political exertion and excitement; while the white beard, which he wears to the utmost length that is now permitted, (Sultan Mahmoud having lately regulated this important point, and having even curtailed the exuberance of that of one of his ministers with his own Imperial hands!) gives him an air of patriarchal dignity in excellent keeping with his strictly Oriental costume.
Having been for twelve years Chargé d’Affaires at Paris during the reign of Napoleon, he has a memory stored with anecdote; and a vivacity of expression, and an accuracy of detail, which make his portraits life-like, and never fail to point the moral of the tale. He discourses fluently in French, and enters into the most trifling subjects with a relish and gaiety quite wonderful when his age (near seventy) and his pursuits are taken into consideration; and you have not been half an hour in his society before you feel the greatest surprise that the maladie de pays should ever have been sufficiently strong to induce him to solicit his recall from a court whose now time-worn recollections yet retain so bright a hold upon his nature. Angiolopolo has neither the appearance nor the bearing of a veteran politician; and, were you ignorant of his history, you would look upon him as one who had fallen into “the sear and yellow leaf,” without one storm to hasten the decay.
After an existence of political toil, Angiolopolo has ostensibly retired into the calm and quiet of domestic life. I speak, therefore, of him rather as he was a few months back than as he now actually is; though the fire which has been long burning requires time ere it can be thoroughly extinguished, and it is only fair to infer that, after so many years of state service, Angiolopolo will carry with him the same tastes and pursuits to the grave.
Prepossessed by his appearance, I accepted with pleasure an invitation to spend the day with his family, and the more particularly as I was anxious to make the acquaintance of all those individuals who had become matter of local interest.
When I entered, he was seated in the Oriental fashion on a corner of the sofa, with a small writing-stand on a low stool beside him, and leaning his arm upon a chest of polished wood containing papers. He received us with much politeness, and presented me to his wife and daughter, who were nestled under the covering of the tandour, on the other side of the apartment, and who welcomed me in the most cordial manner.
For a time, nothing but the veriest commonplace was uttered by any of the party; but some political allusion having been accidentally made, he expressed himself both disappointed and annoyed at the supineness of the British Government, though he admitted that it had caused him no surprize, as it was not the first occasion on which England, after amusing and deluding the Porte with promises of protection and support, had failed to fulfil her pledges in the hour of need. “As individuals,” he added emphatically, “no one can respect the English more than I do, but as a nation every thinking man throughout the Ottoman Empire has lost faith in them—the trust and confidence which the Turks once placed in the political integrity of Great Britain are at an end for ever.”
As he was an invalid, we dined en famille; and I was struck with the extreme attention and deference that he showed towards his wife; all the other Greeks with whom I had become acquainted being the most indifferent, or, as we style it in Europe, the most fashionable of husbands; nor was I less surprised at the apparent zest with which he entered into the inconsequent conversation that ensued, and the playfulness with which he bandied jest for jest, and piled anecdote on anecdote. One incident that he mentioned I may repeat without indiscretion, as it cannot, after such a lapse of time, affect the individual who is its subject, and whose literary reputation is now too well established to be injured by the old-world histories of the past.
Angiolopolo was one day dining at the table of the Duke de Rovigo, when the work of Chateaubriand on the East became the subject of conversation; the author himself, then a very young man, and but little known in the world of letters, being one of the guests; and, while it was under discussion, the Duke requested of Angiolopolo to give him his opinion on its merits. The Ottoman Chargé d’Affaires, aware that Chateaubriand was present, and not wishing to pronounce a judgment that must be displeasing to him, carelessly replied that he remembered having met with the work some time previously: and thus sought to turn aside the subject, the more particularly as, not being supposed to be aware of the vicinity of the author, he had no apology afforded him on the score of delicacy, should he pronounce an opinion tending to gloss over his real sentiments.
But this indefinite reply did not satisfy the Duke, who expressed his astonishment that a native of the country of which the work treated should feel so little interest in the subject as to retain no memory of its contents. Thus urged, Angiolopolo found himself compelled to declare that he had not only read the book carefully, but still retained the most perfect recollection of many of its passages; and that he had evaded the inquiry simply from a disinclination to speak with severity of a writer, who had permitted himself to describe the domestic manners of a people, of whom he had only been enabled to judge from such specimens as coffee-houses and the like places of vulgar resort had offered to his observation.
That he should form erroneous opinions of the mass from these low-bred and low-minded portions of the population might be pardoned, as the error of a surface-scanning and light-headed traveller; but that he should put them forth in sober earnestness to mislead wiser men, who did not possess the opportunity of forming a more correct judgment for themselves, was a graver and a more reprehensible fault, and one which no native of the East could easily forgive. Had he been honest, he would frankly have acknowledged that the doors of the higher classes were reluctantly and rarely opened to the Franks, who required the best introductions to secure an entrance into any distinguished house; both the habits and the position of the Orientals being unfavourable to the curiosity of strangers—and not have libelled a people of whom he really knew as little on his return to Europe as the day on which he landed at Stamboul.